Subject: Review: Jurassic Park III (2001)

From: Harvey S. Karten <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 03:13:28 -0000

JURASSIC PARK III

 Reviewed by Harvey Karten
 Universal Pictures/Amblin Entertainment
 Director: Joe Johnston
 Writer:  Peter Buchman, Alexander Payne, Jim Taylor, based on
Michael Crichton's characters
 Cast: Sam Neill, William H. Macy, Tea Leoni, Alessandro Nivola,
Trevor Morgan, Michael Jeter, John Diehl, Bruce A. Young

   In Julien Temple's movie "Pandaemonium" which opened one
week before "Jurassic Park III," much is made of Samuel Taylor
Coleridge's great poem "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," whose
moral appears near the conclusion stanza, "He prayeth best, who
loveth best/All things both great and small."  Well, now, Sam
Coleridge would probably need to do a lot of praying had he
landed on the island of Isla Soma (near Costa Rica) but he'd have
a difficult time loving any of the creatures there, most of whom
would be out to make a shepherd's pie out of the poet.  Coleridge
would be confronted not only by the massive Spinosaurus, which
could hunt on land and water, but if he kept his nose to the
ground while taking care to avoid them, he might still be lifted high
into the air by the flying Pteranodons.  Though Coleridge lived
during the Eighteenth Century, which would be considered
ancient history by most teens today, the age of dinosaurs would
be just about as ancient to him as it is to us in the twenty-first. 
Dinosaurs lived 65 million years ago (that's, what, 650,000
centuries ago?) but thanks to modern scientific, technology, they
have been recreated by a company called Igen and, like the
Frankenstein monster have overwhelmed their creators and taken
over the island.

   "Jurassic Park III" finds Steven Spielberg in the executive
producer's chair this time around with "Jumanji"'s Joe Johnston at
the helm, directing a screenplay by Peter Buchman, Alexander
Payne and Jim Taylor based on Michael Crichton's characters.
While the story is in no way in the same league as the season
other sci-fi pic, Spielberg and Kubrick's "A.I." the special effects,
the sound, and the presence of two superlative actors make "JP3"
well worth visiting.  Filmed on the Hawaiian islands of Oahu,
Molokai and Kauai over a period ten months with much of the
action taking place in Universal's studios, "Jurassic Park III" offers
an assortment of thrills, though nothing particularly new, with
some delightful shtick from William H. Macy in the role of the
klutzy would-be financier Paul Kirby. Kirby and his estranged wife
Amanda (Tea Leoni) need to visit the island to find their fourteen-
year-old son, Eric (Trevor Morgan), who disappeared after being
marooned while on a para-sailing expedition with his mother's boy
friend.  Conning ace paleontologist Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill)
with an offer of big bucks for his research, he gets the scientist
and his associate, Billy Brennan (Alessandro Nivola) to fly with
him to the island on the pretext that he and his wife are taking an
expensive and exciting vacation.

   "JP3" brings back Sam Neill and Laura Dern from their 1993
roles in the original and most celebrated "Jurassic Park," a film
dealing with a billionaire's amusement park populated with living
dinosaurs.  The concept is pretty much the same this time, with
the island in effect serving as an amusement part, given the detail
that the block of jungle was used artificially to create creatures
large and small, but the chills are short of hair-raising--perhaps
because by now we've become accustomed to the usual interplay
of human meets Spinosaurus.  We know well ahead of the actors
which guys are going to die and which are going to survive
(spoiler: the black guy does NOT die first), and we can guess the
future of the estranged couple whose hormones are racing during
the entire time they bolt from the creatures.  (We can also be sure
that they'll probably break up again after a few weeks together in
the less exciting environs of their small, mid-western town.)

   Though William H. Macy, who has turned in spectacular
performances as one of David Mamet's favorites in plays like
"Oleanna" and TV works like "The Water Engine," is not as quirky
as Jeff Goldblum--who performed in the role of a mathematician in
the first "JP"--he provides more than enough comic relief while
Tea Leoni as his wife provides enough screams to compete with
John Williams and Don Davis's intrusive music.  As with "Final
Fantasy," the story's not the thing: in this case, a dollar to your
favorite charity if you can guess which creatures are from Stan
Winston's live action dinosaurs (one of which actually weighs
24,000 pounds) and which are from Jim Mitchell's special effects.
Oh yes, in the final scene quite a few Pteranodons take flight
from the island--and you know what that means.

Rated PG-13.  Running time: 91 minutes.  (C) 2001 by
Harvey Karten, [email-masked]

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